‘Saddam, Gaddafi Used to Win Elections Too’: Rahul Gandhi

Gandhi’s comments came after Freedom House had shifted India’s status from a ‘free’ country to ‘partly-free’.

Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi upped his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in an online interaction held on Tuesday, 16 March, with Brown University faculty and students, saying that Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi used to win elections as well.

His comments came days after a report by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), a Sweden-based institute which downgraded India to an “electoral autocracy,” citing a decline in democratic freedoms. Freedom House too recently shifted India’s status from a ‘free’ country to ‘partly-free.’